Sometimes in 1980, the federal ministry of Science and Technology was created in Nigeria. This ministry was implemented solely to transform Nigeria as a nation into a technology enabled and driven country.
Fast forward 44 years , Nigeria is neither a regional nor global technological powerhouse. Looking through the situation of the Nation, one would obviously be caught within the webs of citizens’ complaints and natural vibe of negativity and hardship. It’s not far-fetched to say the country is hard.
Here is the thing, I do not believe Nigerians are made to suffer, neither do I believe Nigeria is naturally a hard place to be. I strongly believe Nigeria is suffering from a high level of ignorance, deception and backwardness.
Evolution is a major concept of life which must be well understood and embraced in any economy. Life has evolved, The world is transformed but I am afraid our dear country Nigeria has not moved.
Obviously, there are so many reasons our country has remained in this state. I am only going to analyse the parts associated with technological advancements in the nation.
Technology is a powerful tool (if not the most powerful) capable of creating life changing experiences which humans eventually live on.
In this age and time, everyone is one way or the other dependent on a certain technological innovation to live or survive. This meets the basic human survival rule which states “be a solution provider and you can never go poor”.
Nigerians use these technologies to survive, notable examples are Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Gmail, Microsoft teams etc.
Here is a shocker, these are products developed by individuals/companies in technologically enabling environments which a lot of businesses are completely dependent on to run.
These product owners can decide to make their services unavailable to people from a certain demography at any point in time. This action would happen in a minute or less!
What would be the fate of millions of businesses that run on these services. This is why we must invest in enabling and equipping the bright minds of this Nation with these skills to transform the economy into one who exports technological advancements and innovations and NOT only relying on imports.
These issues are fundamental, from elementary school as most Nigerian born Software Engineers have strived and struggled through self learning and self invested processes to attain the feat they are today.
Our schools are not prepared for this. Our higher institutions are not up to date with technological advancements which makes Computer science and ICT graduates not competent enough to create these innovations.
Our society is not inclined to accept these advancements, people are not enlightened on the need to learn a tech skill in this age and time and we do not have the required facilities to aid this learning process.
One example is this, an aspiring software engineer in Lagos might find it difficult getting a job outside the country because the guys abroad are aware of our poor internet and electricity challenges.
This further results in a decline in the amount of talents that could have been empowered with the necessary exposure and experience out there.
The government needs to invest in facilities to help and encourage young lads learn new and updated technologies , thereby empowering them and further raising potentials who eventually become leaders in the technology sector. If we do this as a nation, in no time, Nigeria will be one of the greatest exporters of technological innovations and professionals.
For innovative tech talents, it would be immensely productive to have the government give loans, support, grants or invest in technologically driven ideas to assist the development process.
How does this profit the economy?
- We build our own products and innovations!
- This can benefit the country in the following major waysGreat innovations attract investors all over the world.
- Increases the employment rates of tech talents, hereby reducing the poverty level in the society
- Attracts users all over the world
- Becomes an export for the country
- Helps in automating stressful and tasking processes in our day to day operations
- Sets a good standard and prowess for the great Nation Nigeria
- The younger generation becomes inspired to do more, hereby reducing the amount of youth in criminal and depressing activities.
These would definitely have a good effect in the GDP of the economy
Finally, Nigeria is a great nation, we just need to tap into that greatness, harness and unleash it to the world.
A lot of Niger ian Tech professionals have had to leave the country for “greener pastures”. We need to leverage on this tool called Technology to revive, and amplify our economy into that 21st century advanced and respected technology power house we planned for 44 years ago.
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Who is Oluwaseyi Fatunmole?
Oluwaseyi Fatunmole is the co-founder of Softfax Solutions built to provide core banking, investment, and business solutions to merchants all over the world via the VINTAPAY Mobile Application.
He is a Software Engineer with experience developing scalable and high-standard mobile applications for both Android and IOS ecosystems.
He is also experienced in developing fintech, edutech, investment, e-Commerce, and other business-related applications with vast usage of the Object Oriented Programming principles.
As someone who works in an agile environment, Oluwaseyi Fatunmole has a concise understanding of the SCRUM principles for solution architecture and delivery. He has worked on the backend side of things with ASP.NET core C# with a vast understanding of system architecture as well as database systems.
